Marquis WiFi Vergaderruimte 4 update failed.

I've tried everything, from ssh'ing, factory resetting with set-default, to manually upgrading with upgrade, etc.

Nothing worked. I thought I had a bunch of bad APs (and many had their warranty expire by a few weeks or months).

As a last resort, I decide to reach out to Ubiquiti's support. First line wasn't very helpful, but as the case was escalated, I've managed to recover and properly update the APs.

The trick is to ssh into the device and run the following code:

curl -fs https://dl.ui.com/firmwares/uap/jw/U6Rescue.sh | sh

The device will reboot and pop by up in the dashboard after 2-3 minutes. Then try to update again, and all should work.

Not really sure what's going on here but ...

The official bullshit is to reinstall the Licensing Service (why is there even such a thing). But alas, that didn't fix it.

Also updating AutoCad to 2025 (we're barely even in 2024) didn't fix it (but made it work until the next reboot).

The trick was to go to System Settings > General > Login Items and heading down to "Allow in the Background". Make sure AutoDesk is turned on (no need to turn on AutoCAD).

Sigh.

Only... I realised that for some reason on Raspberry Pi (4), WiFi stopped working with the following errors:

Feb 17 11:55:02 tyr NetworkManager[449]: <info>  [1676631302.2204] device (wlan0): state change: config -> failed (reason 'ssid-not-found', sys-iface-state: 'managed')
Feb 17 11:55:02 tyr NetworkManager[449]: <info>  [1676631302.7525] device (wlan0): set-hw-addr: set MAC address to 92:F3:ED:C2:8F:9B (scanning)
Feb 17 11:55:02 tyr NetworkManager[449]: <warn>  [1676631302.7559] device (wlan0): Activation: failed for connection 'superuser.one'
Feb 17 11:55:02 tyr NetworkManager[449]: <info>  [1676631302.7562] device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: scanning -> disconnected
Feb 17 11:55:02 tyr NetworkManager[449]: <info>  [1676631302.7562] device (p2p-dev-wlan0): supplicant management interface state: scanning -> disconnected
Feb 17 11:55:02 tyr NetworkManager[449]: <info>  [1676631302.7577] device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> interface_disabled
Feb 17 11:55:02 tyr NetworkManager[449]: <info>  [1676631302.7578] device (p2p-dev-wlan0): supplicant management interface state: disconnected -> interface_disabled
Feb 17 11:55:02 tyr NetworkManager[449]: <info>  [1676631302.7579] device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: interface_disabled -> disconnected
Feb 17 11:55:02 tyr NetworkManager[449]: <info>  [1676631302.7579] device (p2p-dev-wlan0): supplicant management interface state: interface_disabled -> disconnected
Feb 17 11:55:02 tyr NetworkManager[449]: <info>  [1676631302.7585] device (wlan0): state change: failed -> disconnected (reason 'none', sys-iface-state: 'managed')

The WiFi SSID and password (wpa_supplicant) never changed, so I wasn't sure what it was. However, as most Pi's are wired I didn't pay much attention, until today.

As I had one RPi where nextdns activate worked fine, without NetworkManager installed, and where WiFi worked, I figured there was something evil about NetworkManager (= breaks my WiFi) and NextDNS not actually needing it...

I reverted my changed from my previous post (and removed some extra stuff that was not needed in my case, YMMV):

apt purge -y network-manager dnsmasq-base resolvconf modemmanager ppp ; apt install -y powermgmt-base openresolv ; apt autoremove -y

The powermgmt-base, and modemmanager, ppp parts are likely not needed, but this is just a copy and paste of what I did.

Reboot... And WiFi worked again. However, nextdns activate would still throw an error:

# nextdns activate
Error: NetworkManager resolver management: exit status 5

Going through the source code (yay for open-source) I noticed:

var networkManagerFile = "/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/nextdns.conf"

That file indeed existed on both RPis that had the activate issue.

I ran the following command...

rm /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/nextdns.conf

But that still gave the same error. But as I had purged the entire NetworkManager, I didn't need its lingering config files... So, why not rid ourselves of everything:

rm -r /etc/NetworkManager

And tada... Now activate works fine:

tyr ~ # nextdns activate
tyr ~ #

Go figure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Before doing the full reinstall, I took a dump (dd) of my disk.

Usually, I create one per partition, but this was the Christmas season, and I was half occupied with feasting and half occupied with entertaining Ila. So, mistakes were made.

I ran dd if=/dev/sdb of=backup.img -- but this means I can't mount the disk directly, as it's not a partition:

# mount backup.img /tmp/disk
mount: /tmp/disk: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop0, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

I should've dd'd /dev/sdb2 instead of the entire disk.

All right, so let's figure out what can be done... First, let's look at the content of the image:

# fdisk -l backup.img
Disk backup.img: 111.8 GiB, 120040980480 bytes, 234455040 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x8297a463

Device          Boot  Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
backup.img1 *      8192   532479   524288  256M  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
backup.img2      532480 34078199 33545720   16G 83 Linux

So, we can probably mount starting from sector 532480.

We can see that the sector size is 512 (which, I think, is the default for most). So, if we multiply 512 * 532480 we get 272629760.

Now we can mount the disk using the following command:

mount -o loop,offset=272629760 backup.img /tmp/disk

And that should do it.

The 2nd partition (the one with data) is now mounted and accessible under /tmp/disk.

If you need the first partition, the same can be done by running 512 * 8192 = 4194304; the following command mounts the boot partition:

mount -o loop,offset=4194304 backup.img /tmp/disk.

# nextdns activate
Error: NetworkManager resolver management: exit status 1

It seems like NextDNS was actually running, but just throwing an error when running nextdns activate. Restarting did seem to work without throwing any error.

The logs showed the same error:

Dec 20 14:06:20 tyr nextdns[5753]: Starting NextDNS 1.38.0/linux on :53
Dec 20 14:06:20 tyr nextdns[5753]: Listening on TCP/:53
Dec 20 14:06:20 tyr nextdns[5753]: Starting mDNS discovery
Dec 20 14:06:20 tyr nextdns[5753]: Listening on UDP/:53
Dec 20 14:06:21 tyr nextdns[5753]: Connected 45.90.28.0:443 (con=13ms tls=58ms, TCP, TLS13)
Dec 20 14:06:21 tyr nextdns[5753]: Connected 185.18.148.91:443 (con=12ms tls=28ms, TCP, TLS13)
Dec 20 14:06:21 tyr nextdns[5753]: Switching endpoint: https://dns.nextdns.io#185.18.148.91,2a04:b80:1:30::2
Dec 20 14:06:25 tyr nextdns[5753]: Setting up router
Dec 20 14:06:25 tyr nextdns[5753]: Activating
Dec 20 14:06:25 tyr nextdns[5753]: Activate: NetworkManager resolver management: exit status 1

The solution was (as root):

apt install network-manager resolvconf -y
systemctl enable NetworkManager
systemctl start NetworkManager
nextdns activate

Looks like, instead of resolvconf, openresolv was installed.

First time I heard about openresolv; usually resolvconf is the default. Not entirely sure if this was the culprit (and NetworkManager not being started) but the errors are now gone.

And you'll notice errors in the webdev tools similar to Failed to find a valid digest in the 'integrity' attribute, with computed SHA-256 integrity:

Failed to find a valid digest in the 'integrity' attribute for resource 'https://mastodon.yeri.be/packs/js/common-997d98113e1e433a9a9f.js' with computed SHA-256 integrity 'YgEhHmwjKL88zKfUOMt/qRulYurIuHzhn4SZC9QQ5Mg='. The resource has been blocked.
@yeri:1 Failed to find a valid digest in the 'integrity' attribute for resource 'https://mastodon.yeri.be/packs/js/locale_en-f70344940a5a8f625e92.chunk.js' with computed SHA-256 integrity '1VgpQjY/9w/fgRLw1QH2pfzqr36p3hINvg9ahpBiI2U='. The resource has been blocked.
@yeri:1 Failed to find a valid digest in the 'integrity' attribute for resource 'https://mastodon.yeri.be/packs/js/public-a52a3460655116c9cf18.chunk.js' with computed SHA-256 integrity 'onh6vHxzykkVgJkiww+OCPk0tKC48KMUD9GVJ8/LKJQ='. The resource has been blocked.

Basically, the sha256 hash doesn't match the js or css static files.

This happens because Cloudflare minifies those files and thus the hash has been changed.

To get it to work correctly, you'll need to create a Page Rule via Rules > Page Rules > Create Page Rule with the following info:

• URL: YourMastodonURL.com/packs/*
• Settings: Auto Minify: off (do not select anything)
• Rocket Loader: slider off

Don't forget to purge your cache via the dashboard (for the Mastodon domain) via Caching > Custom Purge > Hostname > YourMastodonURL.com.

For the past few weeks, several times a day her screen would black out for half a second or so and then everything should go back to normal. Sometimes it would happen several times in a row, sometimes it wouldn't for hours on end.

I tried several things, including getting a 8k 120hz HDMI cable, using a usb-c to DP cable, changing the GPU vRAM minimum from 128Mb to 2048Mb (quite the hack, as it can't be set in the bios -- requires messing around in the registry. Wow.), updating all the drivers, updating the bios, making sure the NUC was properly ventilated and keeping cool (every full moon the NUC shuts down due to overheating in Singapore if I set the fan to 'balanced' instead of 'cool'), and probably more. And because it happened so sporadically it was quite hard to debug (to the point I sometimes didn't want to believe her as I couldn't see it blacken out).

Shan was getting frustrated (which in turn means I get frustrated)... and I started looking at getting either an eGPU (I can get a free Nividia M6000, just need the enclosure, but the enclosure would be $$), an AMD Ryzen 5 or 7 NUC (no more Intel in this house, but also $$$), or some other refurb (massive) desktop some friend had lying around (HP z240 or something, zero $, but Shan would kill me for having this massive thing on her desk).

Turns out, the quick fix, was to simply disable hardware acceleration.

Run GRAPHICSCONFIG and uncheck hardware acceleration.

This is probably not ideal in the long run (hopefully it's an issue with AutoCAD 2022 that is getting fixed, as opposed to the onboard Intel GPU getting messed up with AutoCAD).

When in doubt… Turn off hardware acceleration.

Quite annoying -- but it's a beta after all. I shouldn't complain. I did what every good beta tester would do: I filed a bug (it's still unanswered from what I can see).

Beta updates came and went but the date did not come back. Would I be unable to use my watch to figure out the date?! It's when you lose a feature that you see how often a day you use it.

And then, out of the blue, the big stable release. Apple Watch OS 7 is released to the general public. Surely, I thought, they must've fixed it now.

But alas, I was to be disappointed.

I updated Shan's watch (that never ran the beta) to see if she had the same issue -- but her watch was fine. Sooooo... What was I doing wrong? Why me, Apple Overlord?

I started fiddling around with my language and regional settings (nope, not it), and was contemplating a factory reset (argh, re-adding all my cards to Apple Pay)...

And then...

An epiphany.

They wouldn't?!?! Would they??

Something only Apple would dare to do.

I deleted the Apple Calendar app (on my iPhone) -- as I use the Google Calendar app. Would that somehow be related?

And guess what... Installing the Apple Calendar app via the App Store resolved it:

Check Apple Watch and the option is back!

That's one way of forcing people to use your apps.

This is what I think I've done to fix the issue. It seemed that /persist partition was corrupt. I tried a factory reset, flash new stock images, and clear cache, etc before trying the following.

Note that I managed to boot Android 4.4, but nothing else; it did throw a shit load of errors though (Google Play crashes, etc).

First of all, get ADB & Fastboot here. You'll also need an hex editor (mac).

This will unlock your phone's OEM mode; and thus potentially voiding warranty and erasing all data (!).

Edit file paths as needed, this is a copy paste of what I can still see on my terminal.

If you know your device's WiFi MAC & Bluetooth address that'll be useful for later, as apparently that gets wiped.

Boot into recovery boot by turning off your device and then holding the power + volume down button.

$ ./fastboot-mac oem unlock
... OKAY

Flash openrecovery (TWRP):

./fastboot flash recovery ../openrecovery-twrp-2.8.5.2-hammerhead.img
sending 'recovery' (13918 KB)... OKAY
writing 'recovery'... OKAY

Boot into recovery mode (using volume buttons) from the recovery boot. ADB should work now. This will find a bunch of errors and destroy the partition.

nazgul ~/Android $ ./adb-mac shell

~ # e2fsck /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/persist
e2fsck 1.42.9 (28-Dec-2013)
Superblock has an invalid journal (inode 8).
Clear<y>? y
yes
*** ext3 journal has been deleted - filesystem is now ext2 only ***
Superblock has_journal flag is clear, but a journal inode is present.
Clear<y>? yes
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/persist was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Journal inode is not in use, but contains data. Clear<y>?
yes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
Block bitmap differences: -(75--1098)
Fix<y>?
yes
Free blocks count wrong for group #0 (2972, counted=3996).
Fix<y>?
yes
Free blocks count wrong (2972, counted=3996).
Fix<y>?
yes
Recreate journal<y>?
yes
Creating journal (1024 blocks): Done.
*** journal has been re-created - filesystem is now ext3 again ***
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/persist: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/persist: 30/1024 files (3.3% non-contiguous), 1124/4096 blocks

~ # e2fsck /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/persist
e2fsck 1.42.9 (28-Dec-2013)
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/persist: clean, 30/1024 files, 1124/4096 blocks

~ # make_ext4fs /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/persist
Creating filesystem with parameters:
Size: 16777216
Block size: 4096
Blocks per group: 32768
Inodes per group: 1024
Inode size: 256
Journal blocks: 1024
Label:
Blocks: 4096
Block groups: 1
Reserved block group size: 7
Created filesystem with 11/1024 inodes and 1102/4096 blocks
Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

So far, so good. Persist partition was corrupt and recreated.

The original howto (see below) said root (su) was needed here; however it worked without root for me (?).

Download this file (kudos to whoever made it) and unrar it. Use your hex editor to edit last 6 digits ("00 00 00") to a valid hex value, or even better, your actual MAC address if you can remember/find it.

Now upload these two (hidden) files to /sdcard/:

nazgul ~/Android $ ./adb-mac push .bdaddr /sdcard/.bdaddr
0 KB/s (6 bytes in 0.078s)
nazgul ~/Android $ ./adb-mac push .macaddr /sdcard/.macaddr
1 KB/s (6 bytes in 0.004s)

And run these commands:

nazgul ~/Android $ ./adb-mac shell
~ # su
/sbin/sh: su: not found
~ # cd /persist
/persist # ls
/persist # mkdir bluetooth wifi
/persist # chown bluetooth:system ./bluetooth
/persist # chmod 770 ./bluetooth
/persist # ls
bluetooth
wifi
/persist # cp /sdcard/.bdaddr /persist/bluetooth
/persist # chown bluetooth:system ./bluetooth/.bdaddr
/persist # chmod 660 ./bluetooth/.bdaddr
/persist # chown wifi:system ./wifi
/persist # chmod 770 ./wifi
/persist # cp /sdcard/.macaddr /persist/wifi
/persist # chown wifi:system ./wifi/.macaddr
/persist # chmod 660 ./wifi/.macaddr
/persist # rm /sdcard/.bdaddr
/persist # rm /sdcard/.macaddr
/persist # reboot

Go back into recovery boot and flash Android (I flashed 4.4 first, made sure it worked, and then flashed 6.0.1 (latest at this time); but you can probably flash latest version right away. Also unzip the zip file with all the images inside the .tar.gz -- we'll need the files later:

nazgul ~/Downloads/hammerhead-mmb29k.6 $ ./flash-all.sh
sending 'bootloader' (3120 KB)... OKAY
writing 'bootloader'... OKAY
rebooting into bootloader... OKAY
sending 'radio' (45425 KB)... OKAY
writing 'radio'... OKAY
rebooting into bootloader... OKAY
archive does not contain 'boot.sig'
archive does not contain 'recovery.sig'
archive does not contain 'system.sig'
--------------------------------------------
Bootloader Version...: HHZ12k
Baseband Version.....: M8974A-2.0.50.2.28
Serial Number........: 0644c9920b105eb5
--------------------------------------------
checking product... OKAY
checking version-bootloader... OKAY
checking version-baseband... OKAY
sending 'boot' (9154 KB)... OKAY
writing 'boot'... OKAY
sending 'recovery' (10012 KB)... OKAY
writing 'recovery'... OKAY
sending 'system' (1020405 KB)... OKAY
writing 'system'... OKAY
erasing 'userdata'... OKAY
erasing 'cache'... OKAY
rebooting...

Note that it won't actually boot yet, so go back into recovery boot, and flash userdata and cache (not sure why they go missing or get entirely erased):

nazgul ~/Downloads/hammerhead-mmb29k.6 $ ./fastboot flash userdata image-hammerhead-mmb29k/userdata.img
sending 'userdata' (137318 KB)... OKAY
writing 'userdata'... OKAY
nazgul ~/Downloads/hammerhead-mmb29k.6 $ ./fastboot flash cache image-hammerhead-mmb29k/cache.img
sending 'cache' (13348 KB)... OKAY
writing 'cache'... OKAY

Execute a normal boot now, and wait 5 to 10 minutes.

Android should boot up normally now.

You can also OEM lock your phone again, if you wish (but a sticky bit has been set).

I've followed these forum posts.

I’ve come across an issue for the past 10 days that Waze kept losing its GPS fix. This meant:

• constantly switching between 0 and 120 (or whatever) km/h
• constantly zooming in & out on maps (dynamic zoom level depending on speed)
• being in a field/not on the road for most of the time, or stuck to a location of many minutes ago
• often & randomly losing GPS fix (ie middle of the highway without any buildings blocking the line of sight)
• I could do a 45 minute trip with Waze never getting a GPS fix
• not knowing road issues (accidents, traffic jams ahead, speed traps, etc)

• nothing changed (no new car window, didn't move my phone location in the car, etc)
• not moving (ie parked car) didn't really improve the GPS fix
• even left my phone with Waze on in the car for 30 minutes parked (got a fix, but later that evening when driving home it started to lose its GPS fix again)
• clear Waze cache
• uninstall Waze completely
• GPS Essentials showed a fix with 3 or more GPS satellites when Waze couldn't get a fix
• I was about to find a way to reset my GPS and/or clear its cache (???)

What I did notice, however, is that in Google Maps the arrow (clicking the pin point button twice or something) was pretty much showing the opposite direction of how the car was moving (thus driving backwards at ~120km/h). This made me think, as I know the GPSes in smartphones are quite cheap and aren’t always on (to save battery – my phone is always being charged in the car though) and the phone uses the accelerometer and other sensors to “guess” current path (or rather, path changes, ie taking a turn or slowing down/accelerating).

I then recalibrate my compass using this method with the free app GPS Essentials (compass tab). I noticed two things

• my compass was showing south as north
• calibrating it in my room (no known magnets here) gave a mixed result (it sometimes pointed north, and sometimes stopped doing so)
• moving around gave me a better calibration (more accurately pointing north)
• question? Is the compass chip fucked? broken? cheap ass crap?

• Waze almost instantly has a GPS fix
• Waze doesn't lose its GPS fix most of the time but ...
• Waze still occasionally loses its fix (but regain it after a second or two, three)

Edit: the problem comes back after ~1 day. Compass often stuck and doesn’t really point north. Ever. Calibrating sometimes helps, but it ends to get stuck again after a while. Nexus 5 chipset issue? Google Navigation works (way) better (it doesn’t remain at the same location for ~10 minutes), but it’s not very precise either (always lagging behind a a street or cross road or something). Perhaps Google Navigation is better at using GSM localisation and doesn’t use the compass to figure out so much?

Edit 2: It works “fairly ok” if I calibrate my compass just before driving. It still loses its fix a few times, but all in all it was acceptable.

I’ve seen in tools like GPS Status that north always points to the bottom right (“south east”) unless it finds a GPS fix. When it’s stuck “finding GPS location” my compass is entirely off and Waze is seeking a fix. When it has a GPS location Waze is fine.

Note that while it cannot find a GPS location, it does have a fix with 3+ GPS satellites.

So I’m not sure if it’s a compass issue, or a GPS issue, and what the definite difference is between both (a smartphone compass not being a magnetic compass if I understand correctly).

I had to restore my trash folder from backups every 7 days (yay for rdiff-backup).

It took me a while to figure it out… The problem first appeared in October, right after several big changes:

• Yosemite update
• Airmail to Airmail 2 update (I was convinced this was the root cause, looking at my clients instead of the server)
• Android 5.0.x
• Android Email app sunset, changes to GMail app
• IPv6 working decently at home after updating my RPi to Fritzbox devices.
• Random connection errors in GMail app (this was due to misconfigured DNS in the GMail app and causing IPv6 catch all to redirect to the webserver instead of the mailserver. It didn't happen consistently because over mobile (4G & lower) there is no IPv6 and at home is randomly falls back to IPv4 as well. IPv4 DNS was well configured.
• Moving my ~100.000 deleted e-mails from "Deleted Items" (OS X Mail default) to "Trash" (Android & Courier default) to stop having to move them manually from one folder to the other every so often. => this was eventually the cause but I didn't realize.

Debugging was also extremely slow as I had to wait 7 days before being able to check if the changes I made helped anything.

I eventually figured out that it was not Airmail when I rebuild my whole mail database and it defaulted back to putting my deleted mails into the Archive folder instead of Trash. Archive mails were kept over 7 days, but items in Trash still removed.

That’s when I started looking at Courier IMAP config: /etc/courier/imapd (and not imapd-ssl).

There’s an option that says:

##NAME: IMAP_EMPTYTRASH:0
#
# The following setting is optional, and causes messages from the given
# folder to be automatically deleted after the given number of days.
# IMAP_EMPTYTRASH is a comma-separated list of folder:days.  The default
# setting, below, purges 7 day old messages from the Trash folder.
# Another useful setting would be:
#  
# IMAP_EMPTYTRASH=Trash:7,Sent:30
#
# This would also delete messages from the Sent folder (presumably copies
# of sent mail) after 30 days.  This is a global setting that is applied to
# every mail account, and is probably useful in a controlled, corporate
# environment.
#
# Important: the purging is controlled by CTIME, not MTIME (the file time
# as shown by ls).  It is perfectly ordinary to see stuff in Trash that's
# a year old.  That's the file modification time, MTIME, that's displayed.
# This is generally when the message was originally delivered to this
# mailbox.  Purging is controlled by a different timestamp, CTIME, which is
# changed when the file is moved to the Trash folder (and at other times too).
#
# You might want to disable this setting in certain situations - it results
# in a stat() of every file in each folder, at login and logout.
#
IMAP_EMPTYTRASH=Trash:7

Comment out that last line, and restart courier-imap(-ssl)… Simple as that.

This solved my issue.

I’m not sure when that config change happened (Debian update?) and I do not know who at Courier thought it was a good idea …. But sheesh.

Using 2Gb of RAM seems to do the trick.

I never found a way to get rid of it, and it has annoyed me ever since. Until yesterday...

This is how to get rid of it:

1. play movie
2. drag to 2nd screen
3. click Video > Float on Top
4. go full screen (cmd+F or Video > Fullscreen)

Keep in mind, that once you get out of full screen, and get back in it, the bar will be back. Enabling and disabling the above mentioned option won't change it anymore. The only solution I've found was to quit VLC entirely, reopen it, go back the where the movie was, click the option, and go full screen...

plxthx for buggy releases.

Edit: Today I am unable to apply my above mentioned 'fix'. I have however found another option under VLC preferences: "Interface > Use the native fullscreen mode". Deselect that option, and it seems to be working.

I tried rebooting (and unchecking “reopen apps at startup”), which helped for about 5 minutes.

I tried closing down apps (which helped; especially keeping Mail closed helped a lot). But even watching a YouTube or playing Music on Google Music caused the CPU fan to start spinning way louder than before.

It quickly came to a point it started driving my crazy and I had a really loud machine which was also sluggish and laggy at some random points (=> not sure if it’s related, but I haven’t had it since).

The thing I tried was a SMC reset, and that did the trick. Since then I haven’t heard the fan on normal load anymore.

Do this (on an Air):

1. Turn off the Mac
2. Be sure it's connected to the Magsafe
3. Hit left shift + ctrl + alt (option) + power (like just one second or something apparently)
4. release the keys
5. and boot normally (hit power button)
6. that should be it

mother ~ # dig mother.titify.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-rpz2+rl005.12-P1 <<>> mother.titify.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 12227
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;mother.titify.com. IN A

;; Query time: 1 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)
;; WHEN: Sat Sep 28 18:08:19 2013
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 35

As you can see, there is a QUESTION section, but no ANSWER. This is an example with a CNAME:

airgul ~ $ dig netly.io

; <<>> DiG 9.8.5-P1 <<>> netly.io
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 2513
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;netly.io. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
netly.io. 21600 IN CNAME mother.netly.io.
mother.netly.io. 21600 IN CNAME mother.titify.com.

;; Query time: 277 msec
;; SERVER: 10.60.111.1#53(10.60.111.1)
;; WHEN: Sat Sep 28 20:06:00 CEST 2013
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 78

Solution:

mother # /etc/init.d/pdns stop
mother # /etc/init.d/pdns monitor

Will probably give an error message such as:

Sep 28 18:08:02 Should not get here (ns1.titify.com|1): 
please run pdnssec rectify-zone titify.com
Sep 28 18:08:02 Should not get here (ns2.titify.com|1): 
please run pdnssec rectify-zone titify.com
Sep 28 18:08:02 Should not get here (ns1.netly.io|1): 
please run pdnssec rectify-zone titify.com
Sep 28 18:08:02 Should not get here (ns2.netly.io|1): 
please run pdnssec rectify-zone titify.com
Sep 28 18:08:10 Should not get here (mother.titify.com|1): 
please run pdnssec rectify-zone titify.com
Sep 28 18:08:19 Should not get here (mother.titify.com|1): 
please run pdnssec rectify-zone titify.com

Execute that command:

pdnssec rectify-zone titify.com

and it’s magically fixed.

/bin/run-parts /etc/rc.local.d

and files in /etc/rc.local.d looking like this

hostname.sh sshkeys.sh firstboot.sh

it’s not going to work.

Why, you ask, after cursing and shouting for the past hour?

because run-parts ignores files with dots (".") and/or .sh files.

Yes. True story.

rename all the files to:

hostname sshkeys firstboot

and your problem will be solved (and of course chmod +x them).

It worked and booted, but the battery got drained in ~8 hours (100% to 0%). And it felt a tiny bit warm on the cover, just above the battery (battery area was normal). Especially in my pocket it would get quite warm.

At 0% it wouldn’t turn off though (but it did anyway after about half an hour of being at 0%).

I was hoping that entirely draining the battery a few times would fix whatever it was, but after the 2nd drain, the red light of death popped up again, and I haven’t been able to boot since.

I’ll attempt to RMA it (I don’t know if they’ll notice I swapped the battery, as that would kind of void my warranty… Well done, LG, well done).

Should probably clean the display before taking a picture next time. ;)

Edit:

I've read on XDA-Developers this might be a product error. My girlfriend also has a Nexus 4 (about 3 months old, mine was 5 months), and that one hasn't caused any problems (although, it seems less smooth, and the battery is drained quicker, than mine).

I'd generally suggest, if you have a red light of death (and it's not flashing) to just RMA it. Not sure if I'll ever see my N4 again. :(

And me, glitched.

I call it art.

I had about 60% of battery left when I turned on the GPS. I tend to recharge my battery every night. It’s times like these I usually just use the GPS without using the car charger. I don’t mind my phone being at 10 or 20% when I arrive home, late at night, as it will be charged overnight anyway.

Almost home, the notification of 14% battery left popped up; I dismissed it as I had 10 more minutes to go. About 5 minutes after that, my phone suddenly switched off. Like, just, suddenly black. No shutdown or anything. It caught my attention, but I left it at that.

Finally home, I quickly unpacked some stuff, checks some mails, etc, and about an hour later I headed to bed.

That’s when I took my phone and plugged it into the charger and a red led popped up. I had never seen this one before.

From there on, I was unable to turn on my phone (my entirely drained Nexus 7 has the same behaviour, it requires being plugged in for 10ish minutes before booting up). I decided to let it charge 10 minutes. Nothing. Hitting power button didn’t change a thing.

As my Roomba seemed to have had a fight with the charger cables under the bed, I thought it might have half ripped the cable or something, so I tried a USB cable and a PC: same. Another charge: same.

Fair enough, I left it charging for the right. Waking up (yes, these things kind of keep me awake – or rather, wake me up) several times during the night, I tried turning it on… but alas. And still a constant red light turned on.

I just had the latest 4.3 bis update (the 7 or 9 Mb update) like 24 or 48 hours before. And I don’t think I had rebooted the device since. Was this causing it?

I started Googling, got in touch with my Amazon.de seller (as it’s ridiculously expensive in Belgium, and I think when I got it, it wasn’t officially for sale here yet) and bought Skype credit (yep, didn’t have a backup phone) to call Google Play support.

Amazon told me to try to do it via Google, or it will take a “very long time” to RMA it.

Google told me to do it via Amazon as it wasn’t bought via the Play store (and send me a troubleshooter to try to “get it out of deep sleep” – but that didn’t work).

I tried several steps, including the hard reset (volume up + power for 60 seconds), but nothing helped.

As it was still under warranty, I didn’t want to really mess up too much, but I couldn’t imagine having to miss this device for another day, let alone weeks…

Drove to my parents to get a backup phone, and there we opened the device (with those odd you-are-not-supposed-to-open-this screws) and, as one post stated on XDA-dev, to unplug the battery.

The multimeter showed 0 volt on the battery (but the connector was so small we weren’t sure it quite touched the copper.

However, reconnected the battery cable and inserted the USB charger… And the screen lit up, a charging icon popped up, and no red light of death. Yay.

Let it charge for ~3 hours (the battery felt warm, but not sure if it was anomalous) and so far so good. We’ll see tomorrow whether it drains faster than usual.

Some people pointed out a product issue, either causing the battery to overdrain (which is bad) or to be too strict on it (and refusing to recharge when it’s quite safe to do so). But the battery itself could also be dying.

I have a phone mount on my dashboard, and during the summer, in full sunlight, using my GPS, and the phone being black, I noticed the back side got quite … hot… So did this cause any permanent damage?

EDIT:

After being fully charged, I noticed a drop of about ~10% per 60 minutes. Which seemed a lot. I let it discharge overnight, and when I woke up it was indeed entirely dead again.

Attempting to recharged caused the red light of death again. Unplugging the battery (for 5 minutes) didn’t solve the problem anymore. It seems like it’s really dead.

We managed to read the voltage with a multimeter, stating 3,15V (instead of 3.8). Unsure whether it’s the battery or the charger of the phone… Unplugging the battery and attempting to charge also causes a red light of death.

I’ll get a new battery on Monday, and do my best to swap it (apparently they glued in the battery… sigh).

EDIT 2:

This.

On a Debian machine.

The solution was changing PCI slot , blowing away all the dust in the mobo PCI slot and on the pins of the PCI card, and gently inserting and removing it a couple of times.

After that it worked correctly.

Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.

I have a Raspberry Pi, acting as TimeMachine (using afp/Bonjour/Netatalk).

There are several things I tried to solve this, including messing in the sparebundle from Linux (chowning) and deleting my TM .plist. This probably messed up my backup a bit.

But what seemed to ‘solve’ it for me was:

1. Start a backup manually (it will fail after a minute or two with the above mentioned error)
2. Open finder, and go to the now mounted disk
3. In my case, there was a <date>.inProgress file
4. If TimeMachine mounted the share for you, you will have write access (see notes below)
5. Delete the inProgress file
6. Empty your trash
7. It should be gone:

   

8. Unmount everything
9. Try backing up again

In my case it changed to this error, which happens to me every so often due to corrupt backups (loss of network (because the drive is on VPN, and when I connect to my VPN Mac starts backing up, eventhough I actually don’t really need/want that, it just happens to find the LAN), sleeping at the wrong moment, and Apple just generally not supporting DIY-TimeMachine). So this does mean I have to start from scratch anyhow… :(

Notes: I’ve tried to manually mount the afp or smb share first, and open  the .sparebundle myself via finder.

Like this:

However, both via Finder as via terminal (including sudo) gave permission errors (partly reading, mostly writing) such as:

Postfix main.cfg:

recipient_delimiter = +

Log snippet:

Apr 16 13:07:52 vm-dns-mail postfix/pipe[6119]: 55D1C2005E4: to=<user+test@rootspirit.com>, 
relay=maildrop, delay=0.06, delays=0.01/0/0/0.05, dsn=5.1.1, status=bounced 
(user unknown. Command output: Invalid user specified. )

Tried to find what’s wrong in MySQL, change the delimiter, Debug Maildrop, etc. Not much progress… :( And after 6 hours I was starting to get annoyed.

The clue was changing this line in master.cfg:

maildrop unix - n n - - pipe
 flags=DRhu user=vmail argv=/usr/bin/maildrop -d ${recipient}

to

maildrop unix - n n - - pipe
 flags=ODRhu user=vmail argv=/usr/bin/maildrop -w 90 -d ${user}@${nexthop}
 ${extension} ${recipient} ${user} ${nexthop}

Source where I ripped the line from.

Picture taking on 23 July 2012 at 02h55 (local time).

2013-02-05 17:44:31 write UDPv4: Can't assign requested address (code=49)
2013-02-05 17:44:33 write UDPv4: Can't assign requested address (code=49)

This seems to appear more often when swapping WiFi/IP range (after my Mac goes into sleep). But also happens when connecting to the same WiFi. It doesn’t change anything whether I disconnect OpenVPN before putting the Mac to sleep.

The solution I’ve found to solve this is:

1. Disconnect OpenVPN (via Tunnelblick)
2. Turn off WiFi
3. Run the script I've attached below (flush.sh)
4. Fill in your admin/sudo password
5. Hit ctrl+C if it doesn't exit instantly (happens in 99% of the cases)
6. Run the script once or twice more to be sure, it will exit correctly this time
7. Reconnect to the WiFi
8. Reconnect OpenVPN (via Tunnelblick): this time it will work

Edit: updated script (29/01/2014)

#!/bin/bash
# Change IFACE to match your WiFi interface 
# (en0 on Macbook Air and Retina, en1 on old Macbook Pros with ethernet) 
IFACE=en0
sudo ifconfig $IFACE down
sudo route flush
sudo ifconfig $IFACE up

In case the script hangs (sometimes, route flush hangs): hit ctrl+C, and execute it again.

As I couldn’t find the original CD key I installed it with, I used another one from another installation. So far so good, installation went fine, etc.

Once I started any Office app, it popped up this error: “Microsoft Office professional plus 2010 cannot verify the license. blablabla useless crap check control panel”

I’ve tried:

• Reenter CD key (via setup)
• Repair Office
• Install every single item I could select during the install
• Remove office + reinstall office
• Removed CD key with this
• Reboot over a zillion times
• Cursed

However, this seems to fix it for me:

1. Open command
2. cd C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14
3. cscript ospp.vbs /act
4. reopen any Office. No more errors. Yay

And yes, this includes calling the Proximus helpdesk (6000)… ps: WELL DONE PROXIMUS. NICE.

The message I heard when trying to make an outgoing phone call as along the lines of “You currently cannot make any outgoing calls. Click 1 for additional details.” 1 “Due to technical issues we cannot help you any further” disconnected…

As it turns out, I suddenly need to proof to Proximus I actually lived where I live (it’s a new number/subscription. It worked fine for ~24 hours).

At the loldesk they’ll quickly inform you (after a 15 minute wait and calling them back for the 4th time as the connection was interrupted every other time), you need to mail all the proof to them.

They told me the address was fraud.cell@proximus.be… But that gave me user unknown:

<fraud.cell@proximus.be>: host 127.0.0.1[127.0.0.1] said: 550 5.1.1 [MDA 1.3.0-6854] 
<fraud.cell@proximus.be> User unknown (in reply to RCPT TO command)

and after trying fraud.cel, fraudcell, fraud.cel, fraud.call, fraud.cell, fraud.cell@belgacom.be, etc I had no choice but to call them back… :(

After wasting another 2 hours, it turns out it was actually proximus.net, and not .be, thus fraud.cell@proximus.net… sigh.

And as Google didn’t result any hits on fraud.cell and proximus, I’ll quickly post this in the hope I can help someone in the future… -.-)

But good news, after that it was fixed within the hour.

Visiting that links redirect to a spammy website about real estate… Please clean up your shit -.-)

HTTP headers when getting eurostar.com/bestkeptsecret:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Content-Length: 245
Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2012 22:14:39 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: https://web.archive.org/web/20190118192808/http://www.europesbestkeptsecret.com/
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>301 Moved Permanently</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Moved Permanently</h1>
<p>The document has moved <a href="http://www.europesbestkeptsecret.com/">here</a>.</p>
</body></html>

It started during the night of the press conf when I was catching up on my mails when I got home of a whiskey tasting evening/“apps for whiskey” event.

It suddenly rebooted (the screen lit on showing the usual boot animation (“X”)). I didn’t pay attention.

A couple of minutes (twenty ish) later again.

Odd… I did a reboot myself (hold power button, turn off, turn on).

After booting up for about 30 seconds, it rebooted again… Annoyed but busy with other stuff I didn’t pay that much attention.

This time I unplugged the battery, hoping that would help anything, and tried again.

By the way, this is all on a stock Android 4.2.1.

After booting, I had to refill my pincode each time (so it was not one of those infamous reboots where it saves its session/state/whatever… The cache-thing-whatever was cleared). I first thought some mail over IMAP was causing this (as I was directly thinking of my previous mail issue). But I made sure that I read all my mails and deleted what wasn’t relevant on my Macbook Pro and Nexus 7. It should sync.

Then my attention got caught by the WiFi. While it was connected pretty instantly, it took a long time to change the icon from its grey “I-am-unable-to-access-the-internet” to the usual blue color. Either way after about one or two minutes into Android itself, it rebooted again. Irritating.

So I was starting to think about odd kernel panics or memory problems.

The furthest I got after that was unlocking (pattern) my display, and it would reboot… Not even making it to the settings pane.

After that, it would just loop-reboot. At first I would still see the lock screen popping up, then only the Android boot animation. And after a while it would just loop the Google name and flick black for a second, and (presumably) start over.

No matter what I did (pull battery, try without battery, get closer to the wifi, recharge battery, connect it to my mac, …) it kept on doing that. I decided to head to bed and left my GN off by removing the battery. But 8 hours of rest didn’t really help my phone. The next morning it was still behaving the same.

I saw no other option that going into the boot menu (holding power button + volume down and up) and doing a factory reset. Wiping all my data (well, mainly just my settings (I am lazy), and I don’t have any fancy apps, but it did delete all my pictures which I hadn’t copied to my mac in a long while).

After the data wipe/recovery, I started reinstalling my apps, reconfiguring, and restoring my text messages backup (best app: SMS Backup+) and everything was pretty much okay. No hardware issue, no more reboots…

Note: those with a laggy Galaxy Nexus, this helped me to improve speeds; but a total wipe brought my GN back to about 90% of it’s 4.1 speed (no scientific proof for that though ;)).

Anyway… All was fine until Thursday night. It suddenly started to reboot again, and random. With intervals of, well, sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes 10. I didn’t get to the reboot-loop yet. Turning off wifi or turning off data didn’t seem to help. I tried airplane mode, but I had to make phone calls/text, so I didn’t wait until/whether it rebooted. I tried getting closer to the wifi hotspot, change rooms (yea, whatever) and none of that helped. It kept rebooting during the night (I reentered the pin code twice when I woke up that night). And it kept doing that in the morning…

And as I stayed a couple of days at my parent’s house for Christmas (where everything was fine), I was starting to think my new apartment/steel-tower was bugged (or the Proximus cell tower in the neighborhood).

At this point I was panicking. Looking for options to buy a Nexus 4 and Googling about this (and well, apparently I’m not the only one having this problem). Random reports pointing to random apps, lock screen, GPS, etc.

I noticed for some reason Latitude stopped reporting my location (I hate when it does that for no apparent reason… Already happened 4-5 times the past 2 years) for this device, turned it back on and since then my device hasn’t rebooted yet…

Haunted shit for sure. Google please fix your crap.

To be continued…

Edit: about 24 hours later it rebooted again. When I attempted to insert my pincode it rebooted again. After that I managed to get past the lock screen. I received Whatsapp messages, Twitter crashed, and it started to update apps. After that it (2-3 minutes after booting) it rebooted again.

My phone was running hotter and battery life was suddenly crappier than usual. But not really paying attention, until my cell provider (Proximus) texted me I was over my data consumption limit…

As it was the beginning of the month, so that was unusual. I checked data usage in settings, and noticed ~7Gb of traffic by mail app over WiFi and ~3Gb over mobile data.

The day after I noticed the unusual usage (and as I reached 4Gb traffic) Proximus cut off my data connection around 14h00 (leaving me stranded in the middle of Brussels, unable to use my GPS)…After phoning them I got my access back though.

Not sure where to look (some attachment problem? some fucked mail?) I cleared my inbox, and removed all mails from the folder that IMAP syncs on the Android… Still it was downloading continuously. I started to try to debug the IMAP servers, to see what commands my client was sending, but not finding anything interesting there, I started to wonder what to do…

Then I tried something I really didn’t want to try (yea, now that I think of it, I probably should’ve tried that first, and well, something to do with hating to change settings; and it took me 3 days or something before I tried this): I deleted the first of my 2 IMAP accounts, checked back after ~10 minutes to see if data consumption increased, and no, it hadn’t.

Yay. So now I knew the problem was one of the 2 accounts. I restored my mail account (and to my amazement it actually wasn’t that much settings I had to put back) and kept checking on the data. It didn’t increase anymore.

Soooo, oddly enough that solved the issue (remove and readd the IMAP account).

No idea what happened there.

My bill is 145ish euro’s because of this by the way.

At some random point after upgrading from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion was unable to add new printers.

As I don’t really add new printers on a daily base, I have no idea when it actually happened or what might have caused it.

• If I deleted an existing printer, and tried to readd it, it would throw errors at me.
• Plugging in (known) printers would pop up the dialog "click here to install/download/search for the printer driver", even though it was installed. Clicking install would give me an error no drivers could be found.
• Dymo Labelwriter shizzle stopped working.
• The driver list (system pref > printers > add > select printer software) would be empty, while on another Mac it was fully populated.
• Mac would never find the printer driver for the printer, requiring manual intervention (but, yea, as the list was empty, there wasn't much to select).

This is, as you might guess, quite annoying. Unable to print any new labels or print out any papers (and invoices ! -.-) ) I had to use another Mac just for printing.

Things I tried:

• Thinking it was Dymo driver problem fucking up my ML: reinstall a million different version numbers: didn't help
• Thinking it was Dymo driver problem: remove Dymo from /Library/Printers and reinstall: didn't help
• Manually select the driver when trying to add a printer (Dymo printer in my case, under /Library/Printers/Dymo/bla/something): didn't work
• Reinstall Mac OS X ML without formatting: didn't help
• wipe drive, reinstall and restore all my files/settings: didn't help
• wipe drive, reinstall mac os x ML cleaning and start fresh: 50% of the newly installed apps were crashing (for example: Chrome was unable to start on a _clean_ system), but this is probably an entire different issue. Although I was starting to think my SSD or RAM was fucked.
• wipe drive, reinstall and restore only a part of my files: after trying a few times I found out NOT importing "other files" (which was, the first time I tried, around 20-30Gb... no idea what that was) and "personal settings" (but network settings were just fine): this caused printers to appear in my printer driver list again. Hooray! However:
  • Installing my network printer at home (Xerox) worked, but caused the driver list to go empty again, and printing actually never worked (at this point I was blaming Xerox for having shitty drivers, but I was wrong)
  • (after retrying a wipe-reinstall-half-import:) Installing the Dymo printer worked, but the Dymo software couldn't recognise any printer and this caused my driver list to be empty again
• (by now you can guess how many hours I've spent on this shit while I definitely had more useful things to do).
• Tried manually downloading printers
• and probably a lot of other stuff I would rather forget about

The solution:

After thinking whether I should just buy a new Mac and start fresh (I did actually never wipe my data since, well, probably my Powerbook), and been carrying the same settings and files over my various Macs. But I am just not ready to spend another 2500 euro on a Mac right now.

For, perhaps the first time ever, I went to ~/Library/Printers with Finder… I noticed all my printers were still in that list (even if I hadn’t any printers in system pref). And they are executable packages. They were .app packages actually.

Do note the difference between /Library and ~/Library.

Double clicking any of them resulted in a new yet very useful error message: “print service is not available”.

After a quick Google I came upon this page (which, for some reason is outdated), and that leads to this page (which doesn’t include ML and the Lion explanation I didn’t quite understand). But after some more Googling: tadaaa (#3): Ctrl-click (or right click) in the (probably non existing) list of printers and select “reset printing system”. I have no idea what this does, but suddenly driver names populated my driver list again. Hooray.

Disclaimer: I have yet to add an other printer (I don’t have any printers in my apartment, only at my parents’ house or at the office).

Things I love more and more:

Time Machine!

4.2.1 came. It solved 5% of the lagginess.

However, it was still unbearably slow. With 4.1 I had an amazing phone, 4.2 made me want to shoot it.

But after 4ish weeks I found something out… Go to Settings and then Sync, click the Google account(s). Disable Google Currents syncing.

Enjoy. You might want to reboot to be sure, but for me this brought my phone back. It’s not perfect, it’s still a bit slowish, but it’s a lot better!

I’ve tried the following:

• readd the accounts
• reinstall adium
• run keychain first aid
• check this
• reboot
• pray to the gods, old and new
• check console (which is spawning a thousand million errors about read access denied, but Google told me it's a known Mountain Lion bug)
• update to Mountain Lion 10.8.2

• Uninstall Adium completely (tada)
• install 10.8.2 (well, I happen to reboot just after uninstalling and reinstall Adium, so I'm unsure whether the first or 2nd point was most useful).

Downside: have to readd all accounts (Google 2-step verification fun, and time to delete those old accounts (xmpp/icq) where I forgot the passwords), and reset all your settings.

Edit: it has been confirmed by Adium it’s enough to just upgrade to Mountain Lion 10.8.2 to solve this problem. No need to delete all your settings & accounts like I did… ;)

One of the mayor disturbances I had, was when I was using my Macbook Pro at my home office. I use an external display (some Samsung SyncMaster) as well as my MBP’s main display.

I put my MBP to sleep by simply closing the lid, keeping the power source and external display attached.

Pre-Lion this resulted in my MBP neatly going to sleep mode, in Mountain Lion this resulted in Mac OS using the external display as sole display and keeping the MBP running… Not something I was interested in, as it would either require me to unplug power before closing the lid or manually clicking the sleep button for my MBP to go to sleep.

After some great searching, I came along this post (page 3 and 4 have useful information) and I’ll summarize it here:

1. Unplug your external display
2. open Terminal (via spotlight for example) and type: sudo nvram boot-args="iog=0x0"
3. Type your Mac password
4. Reboot and wait for Mac OS X to fully boot
5. Plug your external display back in. The resolution might be wrong and it might not recognise your display.
6. Go to sleep by closing the lid. It should now work correctly.
7. Upon reopening, the resolution will be fixed (if not, close and reopen or replug the external display -- I'm sure it'll be solved now).

If it screws up your system, just zap the PRAM next boot (cmd-opt-p-r) and you'll be back to the default Lion state. Or if you can still get into terminal, this command will get you back to Lion's default state as well:

sudo nvram -d boot-args

I went into interactive boot mode and skipped Samba.

Thinking it was a networking issue (server has static IP & routing set up) which didn’t match my home network.

Set up dhcp, changed the gateway, and started restarting samba from command line.

It always resulted in something like this:

BroServ ~ # /etc/init.d/samba restart
 * samba -> start: smbd ...
**** HANGS INDEFINITELY **** 
^C * * samba: caught SIGINT, abortingstart-stop-daemon: caught SIGINT, aborting
 [ !! ]v ~ # 
 * samba -> start: nmbd ...
 * start-stop-daemon: /usr/sbin/nmbd is already running [ !! ]
 * Error: starting services (see system logs)
 * samba -> stop: smbd ... [ ok ]
 * samba -> stop: nmbd ...

Could cancel it with ctrl + c (which I couldn’t do at boot).

Tried to recompile CUPS & Samba. Upgraded kernel from 2.6.30 to 3.3.8. Always kept hanging. Google wasn’t really helpful. Many people experienced Samba hanging boot process, but there was never one solution to the problem.

The logs showed something along these lines:

[2012/08/04 16:37:47, 0] smbd/server.c:1141(main)
 smbd version 3.5.15 started.
 Copyright Andrew Tridgell and the Samba Team 1992-2010
[2012/08/04 16:37:47.783423, 0] param/loadparm.c:7668(lp_do_parameter)
 Global parameter guest account found in service section!
[2012/08/04 16:37:47.783520, 0] param/loadparm.c:7668(lp_do_parameter)
 Global parameter guest account found in service section!

Which basically didn’t say much except something about guest account being in the Global section of the config. But at the same time, it had worked for eons before.

However, I went to take a look at noticed this in the Global section:

guest ok = yes

And removed it from that section and restarted Samba:

BroServ ~ # ps aux | grep smb
root 2990 0.0 0.0 4064 576 pts/1 S+ 16:37 0:00 tail -f /var/log/samba/log.smbd
root 3026 0.0 0.0 6368 716 pts/0 S+ 16:38 0:00 grep --colour=auto smb
BroServ ~ # ps aux | grep nmb 
root 2729 0.0 0.0 44008 2736 ? Ss 16:25 0:00 /usr/sbin/nmbd -D
root 3028 0.0 0.0 6368 716 pts/0 S+ 16:38 0:00 grep --colour=auto nmb
BroServ ~ # kill -9 2729
BroServ ~ # ps aux | grep nmb
root 3030 0.0 0.0 6368 712 pts/0 S+ 16:38 0:00 grep --colour=auto nmb
BroServ ~ # /etc/init.d/samba restart 
 * samba -> start: smbd ... [ ok ]
 * samba -> start: nmbd ... [ ok ]
BroServ ~ # /etc/init.d/samba restart
 * samba -> stop: smbd ... [ ok ]
 * samba -> stop: nmbd ... [ ok ]
 * samba -> start: smbd ... [ ok ]
 * samba -> start: nmbd ... [ ok ]
BroServ ~ # /etc/init.d/samba restart
 * samba -> stop: smbd ... [ ok ]
 * samba -> stop: nmbd ... [ ok ]
 * samba -> start: smbd ... [ ok ]
 * samba -> start: nmbd ... [ ok ]
BroServ ~ #

Odd, as the log still shows the same error line:

[2012/08/04 16:38:29, 0] smbd/server.c:1141(main)
 smbd version 3.5.15 started.  Copyright Andrew Tridgell and the Samba Team 1992-2010
[2012/08/04 16:38:29.491274, 0] param/loadparm.c:7668(lp_do_parameter)
 Global parameter guest account found in service section! 
[2012/08/04 16:38:29.491343, 0] param/loadparm.c:7668(lp_do_parameter)
 Global parameter guest account found in service section!

But at least it’s starting up now…

So, what have we learned? Config mistakes can hang Samba and it will result in almost no output to the logs whatsoever.

However, via command line (and user root) it works:

/etc/munin/plugins # ./bind9_rndc 
query_recursion.value 0
query_success.value 80
query_nxrrset.value 17
query_requests.value 104
query_failure.value 0
query_duplicates.value 0
query_nonauth_answer.value 0
query_nxdomain.value 4
query_auth_answer.value 101
query_responses.value 104

Solution:

add this to /etc/munin/plugin-conf.d/munin-node:

[bind_rndc]
user bind

and be sure the key has the right ownership:

sudo chown root:bind /etc/bind/rndc.key
sudo chmod 644 /etc/bind/rndc.key

and restart munin-node.

Attacker finally says to friend “I know all your details, I know all about you; if you let me get away with a little bit of money, I will leave you alone.”  And then a negotiation on how much is a little bit proceeds.  Friend says “I’ll think about it” and hangs up.

Source.

Basically, when adding your Facebook account, Adium opens some webpage asking you to login. I always logged in using my e-mail address (as… that was what the page was actually asking!).

I always managed to successfully login. Facebook then asked to identify my device (“Adium” or whatever).

However, here the problems started. Whenever I clicked save, I just ended up on the same page again, asking me to fill in my device name.

Checking my devices in Account Settings, I saw a million Adiums got added (because of my spam clicking/trying)…

I even tried to disable the “login approvals”, thinking that had something to do with it… But alas.

Thinking it had something to do with cookies (session cookies not/wrongly saved or something by Adium) I updated to betas… Many times, and still no fix. This was becoming annoying and pretty odd. Was I the only one have this problem?

I then tried, instead of using my email address, to use my actual account name (“facebook.com/YOUR-ACCOUNT-NAME”). And guess what… ;) Yea, I could log in, add the device correctly, and Facebook chat went online right away.

Lots of Googling and running Microsoft "fixit" applications didn't do much.

Simple fix: run setup of the proofing tools again, and select repair, reboot, and all should be good.

It was a bit hard to find software that would still allow me to jailbreak this 2G.

Soooow, I mirrored all I used.

Bootloader: 3.9 or 4.6

PwnageTool: 3.1.5

Be aware: you will need iTunes 9 (or 8, I guess) – iTunes 10 gives an error: “iPhone could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (1600).”

Follow basic instructions on the PwnageTool (export mode > you need to select the default IPSW) and you’ll get there.

As IPSW you can use the default IPSW iTunes downloads upon restoring. You’ll find the IPSW in ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates/ (iTunes 10).

I still had iTunes 9 on my old PowerBook, but I guess you can find the installer on the net somewhere and use a virtual machine or something.

When booting the iPhone in DFU mode, iTunes will find the iPhone in recovery mode. Left click + ALT on the restore button and browse to the custom IPSW.

And, yes, this iPhone 2G is for sale :) Contact me if interested ;)

NTP:

Mar 26 20:31:50 localhost ntpd[1055]: ./../lib/isc/unix/ifiter_ioctl.c:348: unexpected error: Mar 26 20:31:50 localhost ntpd[1055]: making interface scan socket: Permission denied Mar 26 20:35:09 localhost ntpd[1055]: ntpd exiting on signal 15

Regular user:

yeri@gplugD ~ $ ping google.be ping: unknown host google.be yeri@gplugD ~ $ ping 85.12.6.171 socket: Permission denied yeri@gplugD ~ $ ssh localhost socket: Permission denied ssh: connect to host localhost port 22: Permission denied

Root:

gplugD ~ # ping 85.12.6.171 -c 1 PING 85.12.6.171 (85.12.6.171) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 85.12.6.171: icmp_req=1 ttl=58 time=37.1 ms — 85.12.6.171 ping statistics — 1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 37.145/37.145/37.145/0.000 ms

Solution? It’s an issue (well, not really an issue, more working like intended) of this kernel flag

CONFIG_ANDROID_PARANOID_NETWORK

And you can fix it by adding the aid_inet group – and adding your user(s) too it. Don’t forget to add NTP etc as well.

gplugD ~ # groupadd -g 3003 aid_inet gplugD ~ # usermod -G -a aid_inet $YOUR-USER

Special thanks to Tim Besard!

(My Serverfault link)

Edit, from the Serverfault page:

On Android Jelly Bean (4.1) used on the Nexus 7, I had to use the group name inet instead of aid_inet, thus:

$ groupadd -g 3004 inet

I used 3004 instead of 3003 because 3003 was already taken by aid_inet

$ usermod -G inet <username> Some code snippets from the Android Kernel related to this go here: http://blog.appuarium.com/2011/06/23/how-android-enforces-android-permission-internet/

Neither was I able to use su, or any other important command.

After many chmods, chowns, and cursing – check your mount (in /etc/fstab) options… ;)

Be sure / is not mounted with

nosetuid

Reboot and enjoy!

<string>9049EF7D-5873-4F54-A447-51D722009310</string>
<string>1C58722D-AFBD-464E-81BB-0E05C108BE06</string>

Between

<key>SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs</key>
<array>

And

</array>

You can find the Info.plist in:

~/Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle/Contents/

Or

/Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle/Contents/

If you already opened Mail (and received the disable warning), it’s probably in a folder named “Bundles (Disabled)”; just move the content to Bundles again.

You can do the same ‘hack’ with GPGMail; it’s located at

(~ or /)Library/Mail/Bundles/GPGMail.mailbundle/Contents/

These UUIDs can be found in these two files (they get updated every Mac OS X update, and thus break plugins each time):

/Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Info.plist
/System/Library/Frameworks/Message.framework/Resources/Info.plist

So from 0.9.4 to 0.6.32 (Lenny), which will be upgraded to 0.7.x in Squeeze.

I’ve come across this error on certain servers:

# /etc/init.d/nginx restart
Restarting nginx: 2011/02/11 11:34:58 [emerg] 3624#0: could not build the server_names_hash, 
you should increase server_names_hash_bucket_size: 32
nginx.

This can be solved by adding this to the nginx.conf:

server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;

Be sure to place it between the http-section.

[...]
http {
    include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;

    access_log	/var/log/nginx/access.log;
	
    sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;

    #keepalive_timeout  0;
    keepalive_timeout  65;
    tcp_nodelay        on;
    tcp_nopush	       on;

    gzip  on;
    gzip_comp_level   5;
    gzip_http_version 1.0;
    gzip_min_length   0;
    gzip_proxied      any;
    gzip_buffers      16 8k;
    # Some version of IE 6 don't handle compression well on some mime-types, 
    # so just disable for them
    gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6].(?!.*SV1)";
    gzip_types        text/plain text/css image/x-icon application/x-javascript text/xml  application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript image/gif image/jpeg image/png application/json application/x-tar application/zip application/x-rar-compressed application/msword application/octet-stream application/vnd.ms-excel application/pdf application/vnd.ms-powerpoint;
    gzip_vary         on;

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
    include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}

Being unresponsive I reset the machine to reboot it.

After booting up and testing websites running on it I came along an odd PHP error;

Call to undefined function http_post_data()

Probably due to PHP updates from Lenny/testing to Squeeze.

This error is caused by not having installed PECL-HTTP (and php-pear php5-dev libcurl3-openssl-dev)

However, PECL-HTTP had been installed for ages and running the pecl install command resulted in this:

# pecl install pecl_http
pecl/pecl_http is already installed and is the same as the released version 1.7.0
install failed

Some quick Googling didn’t come up with a simple fix.

I then tried to reinstall PECL-HTTP (by uninstalling and reinstalling it)

# pecl uninstall pecl_http
Unable to remove "extension=http.so" from php.ini
uninstall ok: channel://pecl.php.net/pecl_http-1.7.0
# pecl install pecl_http
downloading pecl_http-1.7.0.tgz ...
Starting to download pecl_http-1.7.0.tgz (173,979 bytes)
[...]

Which luckily did solve my issue…

So reinstalling does actually solve stuff on Linux :x

Be sure to have extension=http.so in your php.ini and to restart php if it’s running with fastcgi or restarting Apache after making the changes.

Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing mysql:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
/usr/bin/ruby1.8 extconf.rb --with-mysql-dir=/usr/include/mysql
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lm... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lz... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lsocket... no
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lnsl... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lmygcc... no
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
*** extconf.rb failed ***
Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of
necessary libraries and/or headers.  Check the mkmf.log file for more
details.  You may need configuration options.
Provided configuration options:
--with-opt-dir
--without-opt-dir
--with-opt-include
--without-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include
--with-opt-lib
--without-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib
--with-make-prog
--without-make-prog
--srcdir=.
--curdir
--ruby=/usr/bin/ruby1.8
--with-mysql-config
--without-mysql-config
--with-mysql-dir
--with-mysql-include
--without-mysql-include=${mysql-dir}/include
--with-mysql-lib
--without-mysql-lib=${mysql-dir}/lib
--with-mysqlclientlib
--without-mysqlclientlib
--with-mlib
--without-mlib
--with-mysqlclientlib
--without-mysqlclientlib
--with-zlib
--without-zlib
--with-mysqlclientlib
--without-mysqlclientlib
--with-socketlib
--without-socketlib
--with-mysqlclientlib
--without-mysqlclientlib
--with-nsllib
--without-nsllib
--with-mysqlclientlib
--without-mysqlclientlib
--with-mygcclib
--without-mygcclib
--with-mysqlclientlib
--without-mysqlclientlib
Gem files will remain installed in /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.8.1 for inspection.
Results logged to /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.8.1/ext/mysql_api/gem_make.out

Can be solved by installing libmysqlclient15-dev

# apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev

When having this error in OWA, ECP or Outlook:

You can fix this by setting the correct time zone in Outlook (you cannot change it through ECP – you need Outlook):

File > Options > Calendar > Time Zone section

Label: YourCity (e.g. Brussels) Time Zone: YourTimeZone (e.g. UTC+1 Brussels).

Be sure to pick the correct time zone and fill in a label.

Running “get-offlineaddressbook |fl” in the EMS showed it last updated somewhere 16th November 2010.

Trying to manually update it through EMC (“Organizational Configuration > Mailbox > Offline Address Book > right click Default Offline Address Book > click update”) it gave me this error:

 --------------------------------------------------------
 Microsoft Exchange Error
 --------------------------------------------------------
 Action 'Update' could not be performed on object 'Default Offline Address Book'.
 Default Offline Address Book
 Failed
 Error:
 Failed to generate the content of the offline address book
 '\Default Offline Address Book'.
 Two possible reasons for the failure are that the System Attendant Service is not running or
 you do not have permission to perform this operation. Error message :
 'Error 0x6d9 (There are no more endpoints available from the endpoint mapper) from RpcEpResolveBinding'.
 Error 0x6d9 (There are no more endpoints available from the endpoint mapper) from RpcEpResolveBinding
 --------------------------------------------------------
 OK
 --------------------------------------------------------
 --------------------------------------------------------
 Microsoft Exchange Error
 --------------------------------------------------------
 Action 'Update' could not be performed on object
 'Default Offline Address Book'.
 Default Offline Address BookFailedError:Failed to generate the content of the
 offline address book '\Default Offline Address Book'. Two possible reasons for
 the failure are that the System Attendant Service is not running or you do not
 have permission to perform this operation. Error message :
 'Error 0x6d9 (There are no more endpoints available from the endpoint mapper) from RpcEpResolveBinding'.
 Error 0x6d9 (There are no more endpoints available from the endpoint mapper) from RpcEpResolveBinding
 --------------------------------------------------------
 OK
 --------------------------------------------------------

I googled for quite a while trying to find a fix, but nothing useful could be found.

I then checked the “Microsoft Exchange System Attendant” (yes, something I probably should have done first), to find it was stopped even though its startup type is set to Automatic.

Starting this service fixed the issue, and I could now update the Address Book again.

But rebooting the server, caused the service to not start again (and I couldn’t find anything in event logs).

Solution: change it to delayed start and set the first and 2nd failure to “restart the service” and change “restart the service after” to 5 minutes.

Yes, a dirty work around but this solved it. As this service only takes care of address book generation and legacy support, it’s not critical to start at boot.

Solution:

Create 20servlets.policy:

nano -w /etc/tomcat5.5/policy.d/20servlets.policy

And add:

grant codeBase "file:${catalina.base}/webapps/-" {
permission java.security.AllPermission;
};

And restart Tomcat

/etc/init.d/tomcat5.5 restart

mkdir /tmp/disk
mount /path/to/disk.img /tmp/disk
chroot /tmp/disk /bin/bash

nano -w /etc/fstab

none            /dev/pts      devpts    defaults        0   0

apt-get install udev

exit
umount /tmp/disk
xm create /path/to/xen/vm.cfg

xm create vm#.domain

But this resulted in following error:

Error: Device 5632 (vbd) could not be connected. Failed to find an unused loop device

Solution:

Create /etc/modprobe.d/local-loop.conf with this content:

options loop max_loop=64

Turn off all DomUs, yes, bummer. You’ll need to reload the loop module which won’t work if Xen is still using them. xm list should only display Domain-0.

modprobe -r loop && modprobe loop

And restart all DomUs. You can now create 32 (64/2 ~= # of DomUs; increase if you need more) DomUs.

You can check (before & after) the difference in loop back devices: ls -ls /dev | grep loop | wc -l

Changing the US format (yyyy/mm/dd) to EU (dd/mm/yyyy) and every other setting on that page wasn’t actually saved/remembered upon hitting save.

Editing it manually in config.php wasn’t an option either, as it got overwritten every single time. I could of course change permission, and make it unwritable by the webserver, but that would make the rest of the admin panel useless (everything else isn’t configurable anymore).

My workaround:

Install the outdated EN_GB locale from SugarForge. It won’t complain that the versions do not match (unlike the two Dutch locales), but it will break your GUI.

However, this gives you time to edit all the settings, save, and put it back to English (US). And this time, it gets remembered (idem dito for the favicon).

I however kept the EN_GB locale module installed, just in case, and thus didn’t test whether it broke again when the EN_GB mod is removed.

Buggy CRM is buggy. :(

Also, the fact I cannot delete users/employees directly is bugging me. Doubt this CRM will make it into production fase… -.-

As there’s a PHP page as well, I had to set up fastcgi with PHP. I mainly followed this tutorial to try to get PHP working.

However, every PHP page I visited returned following error:

No input file specified.

As I was fairly sure it was path (or variable) related, I played around with:

fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;

Changing $document_root to the full path, etc, without success.

However, as I used the init script in the tutorial, and read a few posts about possible permission errors, I tried adding the group to the fastcgi daemon starter as well.

Change this:

start-stop-daemon --quiet --start --background --chuid "$USER" --exec /usr/bin/env -- $PHP_CGI_ARGS

to:

start-stop-daemon --quiet --start --background --chuid "$USER" -g www-data --exec /usr/bin/env -- $PHP_CGI_ARGS

Notice the “-g www-data” part.

You can always make a variable in case you ever want to edit it.

Restart php_fastcgi and try again. Should work fine now.

Some fast stats: vm1 + nginx, vm1 + lighttpd, vm0 + IIS7, one + Apache, vm1 + nginx + PHP and one + Apache + PHP.

These stats should only give a quick overview. To get correct results it should be ran on the same hardware, at the same moment with the same load, and 100% the same pages.

“One” is a Gentoo dual Pentium III with 1.2Gb ram, “vm0” is a Windows 2008 Xen Virtual machine with 1 Gb ram, and has access to two vCPUs (Xeon), “vm1” is a Debian with 128Mb ram, and also access to two vCPUs (Xeon). Nginx wins on static content (followed by Lighttpd). Apache wins by a little over nginx on PHP content in these tests.

Here’s another site with some stats.

# uname -a Linux Sauron 2.6.33 #1 SMP Tue Mar 9 15:09:05 CET 2010 x86_64 AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 248 AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

This is a Gentoo machine.

Error 1:

The directory of kernel headers (version @@VMWARE@@ UTS_RELEASE) does not match

your running kernel (version 2.6.33).  Even if the module were to compile

successfully, it would not load into the running kernel.

What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running kernel? [/usr/src/linux/include]

This can be resolved by editing version.h (usually in /usr/src/linux/include/linux) and adding this line:

#define UTS_RELEASE "2.6.33"

Error 2:

The path "/usr/src/linux/include" is a kernel header file directory, but it does not contain the file "linux/autoconf.h" as expected.  This can happen if the kernel has never been built, or if you have invoked the "make mrproper" command in your kernel directory.  In any case, you may want to rebuild your kernel. What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running kernel? [/usr/src/linux/include]

As the latest kernel doesn’t seem to contain this file, I took the autoconf.h file from 2.6.22.2, and copied it to the correct place. This made VMware compile (until it errored on other stuff, which can be fixed using this script).

I’m fairly clueless what implications it can have to make these changes. So use at your own risk. :)

As I need to run OpenVPN using the TCP protocol (instead of the faster UDP protocol; as UDP is often blocked in networks I use my VPN in) I experimented by increasing the tcp-queue-limit. The default is 64, and I’ve set it to 256. So far, everything still seems to be working fine (but more packets will be queued before being dropped by OpenVPN, requiring less retransmissions).

Add this to the OpenVPN server config:

Running Wireshark I found that only about 5ish packets got transferred, and all other data to that website abruptly stopped.

I’m using ADSL (EDPnet), which has an MTU of 1492, however, I was able to access all websites from the router (using lynx, for example), but not from any other PC within the network.

# ifconfig ppp0
ppp0      Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:85.234.196.57  P-t-P:85.234.196.1  Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST  MTU:1492 Metric:1
RX packets:38804442 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:28930886 errors:0 dropped:5020 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
RX bytes:45941523311 (42.7 GiB)  TX bytes:2887926670 (2.6 GiB)

Thinking it might have been a firewall issue, I flushed all my iptables rules, and started over from scratch. However, this too didn’t solve my issue.

When I VPN’ed or used my Macbook Pro directly as PPPoE device (by-passing the Gentoo router) I was able to access all the websites as well.

After being close to giving up, I found the following iptables rule:

iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN -j TCPMSS --clamp-mss-to-pmtu -t mangle

And try again.

This did solve my issue. :)

This is because the default 100mbit MTU is 1500, instead of 1492 for PPPoE.

Due to this change, iRail was no longer able to provide any scheduling information which included Brussels-Midi.

I’ve made a quick and dirty work around (by including “+ Eurostar” in the drop down menu), solving this bug.

However, please, NMBS/SNCB, please please please provide an API or report such changes to web developers.

As it is now, if you manually fill in Brussels-Midi and do not add the Eurostar text, the iRail website will not be able to to look up the requested information.

Thanks to Stéphane for the bug report.

However, this GUI includes an old OpenVPN, that is no longer compatible with Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

The TUN/TAP driver will be blocked due to compatibility issues, and when trying to connect to a VPN, you’ll get an error along the lines of:

All TAP-Win32 adapters on this system are currently in use

The simplest fix, is to install the GUI package (including the old OpenVPN binaries), and reinstall OpenVPN afterwards.

You can find the latest OpenVPN binaries here and the latest version, when writing this post here.

This will overwrite the old files and update the driver with a Windows 7 compatible driver.

Try to connect now, everything should work like a charm. :)

bcdedit.exe -set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING ON

Reboot, enjoy. No more annoying messages. :)

Anyway, fixed!

Syncing smart playlists, with “live updating” checked, bugged the playlists on the iPhone (there were songs in the playlist that didn’t belong there). Hoping this bug would be fixed ASAP I tried to ignore it as long as possible… However, it so far hasn’t been fixed.

As I was pretty fed up with unchecking “live updating” for 6 playlists eachtime I synced my iPhone, I tried to play around and find a fix.

Apparently, adding the following rule, solves the issue (don’t ask me why though):

“Playlist - is - Music.”

Add this to all your smart playlists, resync, and your issue should be solved. Don’t forget to check on “live updating” again. ;)

Media kind is music didn’t affect the issue, however, this was an old rule that was already added to avoid getting podcasts into my smart playlists.

Also, if anyone can tell me how to reduce the memory usage of iTunes 9 (using 900+ Mb, coverflow enabled). The only useful work around is either disable cover flow or to put iTunes into Mini Player (shift+Apple+M)…

Hamachi is auto started, at boot, because we have a shortcut in the startup folder. No other way to auto start the free version (as far as I know).

Yet, when starting Hamachi manually after the PC had booted, there were no more errors. So it’s clear Hamachi tried to start before the engine (see services.msc -> LogMeIn Hamachi Engine or something) was started.

And reinstalling Hamachi only seemed to work on one of the XPs.

As there’s no easy way to delay the starting up of a program, I used some dirty vbs and batch… Kinda.

Here’s my solution:

Place both scripts in the Hamachi directory (c:\program files\logmein hamachi)

hamachiStart.vbs:

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run chr(34) & ".\hamachi.bat" & Chr(34), 0
Set WshShell = Nothing

hamachi.bat:

@echo off
ping -n 30 127.0.0.1 >NUL
"C:\Program Files\LogMeIn Hamachi\hamachi-2-ui.exe"
exit

Hamachi.vbs will start the bat file. This seems to be the only way to prevent a command prompt from opening (and staying open all the time).

Hamachi.bat will ping itself for 30ish seconds (don’t think there’s a cleaner way to do this…) and then start the Hamachi GUI.

If you’re still having problems, increase 30 to something like 60 or even more.

Anyway, last thing you’ll need to do is to make a shortcut of hamachi.vbs, and drag it into the startup folder.

Reboot, wait a bit, and enjoy.

A simple fix, is to download the latest version, which is model independent.

Be sure to completely uninstall the previous version, reboot, and reinstall the latest version. I can now successfully login using the biometric fingerprint device.

In my case, Windows 2008, as domain controller, I was added to the “Domain Guests” group.

Make sure you’re not member of that group, and reboot. This should fix the problem.

The issue has been solved and the site is working again as it should be.

I have no idea for how long the website has been broken, as currently I’m not using any trains to reach my destinations. ;)

Don’t forget to e-mail me if you come across bugs. Much appreciated.

This resulted in a constant error; “The pin code was not accepted by the mobile device”.

I of course removed the SIM card each time, and inserted it back in my iPhone, and unlocked it by inserting my code. I didn’t want to lock my SIM card, and made sure I had at least 2 good tries left each time.

As you can let the application remember the pin code, I was 100% sure it were wrong settings. The worst part, was that the application quits after prompting  that message. I reinstalled, searching in the config files, removed all vodafone files, tried in Windows, changed my pin code a couple of times (the default 0000 one too), updated the HAUWEI firmware, updated the Mobile Connect client software, rebooted, and when I was about to give up, it hit me like a truck. I’m from the bloody “hotswap generation”. And Vodafone sucks. Seriously. Wasted 2 hours on that. Such a waste of time, such a simple solution.

When inserting the SIM card into the device. UNPLUG THE USB MODEM. INSERT SIM. THEN, NOT BEFORE, INSERT IT IN THE DAMN PC. Start the application. Enjoy. No more dodgy error messages, the application works, and you can connect to the bloody internet.

GG Vodafone. GG hotswap.

I need it now! :(

06/11/08 11:34:15 [0x0-0x1f01f].net.azib.ipscan[190] [JavaAppLauncher Error] CFBundleCopyResourceURL() failed loading MRJApp.properties file
06/11/08 11:34:15 [0x0-0x1f01f].net.azib.ipscan[190] [JavaAppLauncher Error] CFBundleCopyResourceURL() failed while getting Resource/Java directory
06/11/08 11:34:15 [0x0-0x1f01f].net.azib.ipscan[190] [LaunchRunner Error] No main class specified
06/11/08 11:34:15 [0x0-0x1f01f].net.azib.ipscan[190] [JavaAppLauncher Error] CallStaticVoidMethod() threw an exception
06/11/08 11:34:15 [0x0-0x1f01f].net.azib.ipscan[190] Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
06/11/08 11:34:15 [0x0-0x1f01f].net.azib.ipscan[190]  at apple.launcher.LaunchRunner.run(LaunchRunner.java:112)
06/11/08 11:34:15 [0x0-0x1f01f].net.azib.ipscan[190]  at apple.launcher.LaunchRunner.callMain(LaunchRunner.java:50)
06/11/08 11:34:15 [0x0-0x1f01f].net.azib.ipscan[190]  at apple.launcher.JavaApplicationLauncher.main(JavaApplicationLauncher.java:61)
06/11/08 11:34:15 com.apple.launchd[97] ([0x0-0x1f01f].net.azib.ipscan[190]) Exited with exit code: 1

After some googling I came upon this website.

Following the (long/first) instructions did solve the problem, and I can now run the application.

Only skipping #9, as I could not find the “CFBundleExecutable”, and simply renaming the old ipscan to ipscan.bak, and renaming JavaApplicationStub to ipscan.

The reason behind this is the will to bloat ‘virus databases’ and show unreal high number of detected ‘viruses’ in order to impress their customers. So they include everything they can find on the Internet, including many security tools, such as Angry IP Scanner.

Note that the cross-platform incarnation of Angry IP Scanner (version 3.x) is not being detected.

There is a petition to antivirus software vendors, please sign it.

From Angry Ip Scanner.

Since today I ended up getting this error:

Warning: imap_open(): Couldn't open stream {imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl}[Google Mail]/Spam in /home/yeri/.gmail.php on line 30
Certificate failure for imap.gmail.com: unable to get local issuer certificate: /C=US/ST=California/L=Mountain View/O=Google Inc/CN=imap.gmail.com - Connection failed.

Simply searching this line:

$open = imap_open ("{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl/}$path"

And editing it to:

$open = imap_open ("{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl/novalidate-cert}$path"

Solves the problem.

This will ignore the Google certificate. Please do double check that imap.google.com really points to Google, and it’s not some kind of DNS issue.

I’ve updated the 1st version, that ignores the certificate.

Thanks

• small link (top, left corner) to refresh/go to the main page
• fixed an issue where the dropdown menus would display HH:MM when it should be HH+1:MM - e.g. if the time was 17h55, it would display 17h00 instead of 18h00
• added a return/back button to the results page
• changed (shortened) the Dutch text of "noresults/" page, to fit the text on one line (on the iPhone)
• changed the settings icon to something more... "settings" and less "info"
• Removed the link from iRail.be to m.iRail.be. iRail.be will now be the main site
• added "arrival" and "departure" options, to specify whether you want to arrive or depart at that time
• created a bugs and feedback email address - bugs[@]irail[.]be and feedback[@]irail[.]be
• the touch-icon should be here soon

Thanks to Helene.

When receiving spam in Gmail, you get the annoying bold Spam (12353434) with ‘12353434’ being the number of unread spam messages.

With the introduction of Gmail Labs I’d hope to see an “automaticly mark spam message as seen” feature, which, well, I haven’t found yet.

Being tired of all these increasing spam numbers, and my daily efforts to “select all unread + mark as read”, I ended up writing a small PHP file which connects to the Gmail (using IMAP, so I asume you’ll need IMAP enabled in your settings..) and marks all spam messages as read. Running this script locally with a curl or cron every X time will solve most of your problems, I hope.

Download the file here (phps) or here (txt).

Or just copy paste it!

< ?php
/*
Gmail "spam mark-as-read"

by Tuinslak
www.tuinslak.be

v0.01 :: 26/08/2008 . init php codez
*/

// Config starts here

// Gmail user & pass
$user = "YOU";
$pass = "hiddensecretz";

// Debugging - Outputs a list of mailboxes and status on the imap server (1/0)
$listmailbox = 0;

// Advanced config :o

// "Path" of the (spam) mailbox and/or its name.
// default should be ok with Gmail.
$path = "[Google Mail]/Spam";

// End of config

$open = imap_open ("{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl}$path", $user, $pass, "", 1) or die(imap_last_error() . "

Connection failed.");

// debug
if($listmailbox) {
        echo "<strong>Mailboxes:";
        $folders = imap_listmailbox($open,  "{  Gmail  }", "*");

        if ($folders == false) {
                echo "Call failed\n";
        } else {
                foreach ($folders as $val) {
                        echo $val . "\n";
                }
        }

        echo "</strong><strong>Status</strong>:";
        $status = imap_status($open, "{imap.gmail.com}$path", SA_ALL);
        if ($status) {
                echo "Messages:   " . $status->messages    . "\n";
                echo "Recent:     " . $status->recent      . "\n";
                echo "Unseen:     " . $status->unseen      . "\n";
                echo "UIDnext:    " . $status->uidnext     . "\n";
                echo "UIDvalidity:" . $status->uidvalidity . "\n";
        } else {
                echo "imap_status failed: " . imap_last_error() . "\n";
        }
}

// Mark as read
$search = imap_search($open, 'UNSEEN');
// print out the array containing $search info
//print_r($search);

for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($search); $i++) {
        $read = imap_setflag_full($open, $search[$i], '\\Seen');
}

// and close it down !
imap_close($open);

// EOF
?>

If you plan to execute it from shell, don’t forget to add a shebang “#!/usr/bin/php” on line 1 and chmod +x gmail_spamreader.php.

Edit: Please add a comment if you’re using it, just for statistics. :)

With the new Firefox (v3) and the wordpress update, I was no longer able to see my Wordpress stats on my dashboard.

Every (Wordpress) login attempt, to see the stats, resulted in… Well nothing. I just kept getting back to the login page. No error.

Actually, I have “third-party cookies disabled” on all my browsers; I don’t like to have cookies from sites I do not visit. And this was the cause of the problem.

Simply add an exception for “*.wordpress.com” and you’ll be able to view all your stats again. :)

Trying the Bootcamp setup wizard, I got the same error as I had before - “Your disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved”.

I tried to Zero-Out-Data, overwriting all deleted data on the disk with 0’s. Yet this did not seem to solve the problem.

After deleting some big files, like my heroes & 24 episodes, I tried again. Still nothing.

I then remembered I had WoW Wrath of the Lich King installed (7ish Gb). Deleting the WoW folder and trying again, did solve the problem. I didn’t even have to zero-out-data again.

So, basicly, deleting big files (folders?!) seems to solve the problem too.

The iPhone cannot be used with iTunes because the information required for activation could not be obtained from the iPhone. Check that the SIM card is inserted in your iPhone and that it is not PIN-locked.

Submitting the required (and correct!) info, using my MasterCard, I received this helpful error page (roughly translated): “Order failed. Seller cannot sell item” and at the bottom, error code: 30001100.

I tried to execute the payments multiple times (you have no idea’s how many times I checked and rechecked my credit card number), reordered the item, other browser, and so forth. Nothing helped.

Googleing (Googling?) the error code, returned this.

Search for the error code, and you end up at this line:

When filling in the order, I was unable to choose where I lived, as it was set (uneditable) to Belgium (though I do live in Belgium… Most of the time).

As, at the time of the order, I was in The Netherlands, I quickly understood there was some ip to country check, and Mobistar only wanted Belgium buyers.

Though my MasterCard is hand out by a Belgian bank, and I guess you can’t have a credit card as non resisdential, it would seem logic to accept the payment anyway… But hey, can’t have it all!

Or perhaps use this error code:

Anyway, to solve this problem, you simply need to get a “belgian ip”.

Don’t bother to search for free anonymous Belgian proxies, it will likely fail (don’t even think about Tor) as no one is willing to share in this country… I had to set up Hamachi on a PC there (yes, because it won’t run on os x.5), remote desktop to a PC home, and make the payment/order again.

And guess what? Worked like a charm.

Talk about convient online shopping .. !

This so does remind me about ING and its useful error codes for the most stupid thing, which forced the customer to call the helpdesk, and get annoyed by commercial junk.

By the way, Google for Mobistar, and check out the “Mobistar iPhone is wrong/fail” sites so high in the search results… Haha, really something a company would like to see.

It managed to connect, but no sound was coming out of it. Not when someone was talking, and not when there was a status message (like a join/connect/…).

I tried every out- and input device in “Setup”. I deleted the config, reinstalled, … Nothing seemed to work. I even checked if Vista wasn’t muting it, and it wasn’t. ;)

Yet, when plugging in her (USB) headset, it worked fine… So it had to be a Vista/sound config problem.

My Vista, at home, and the one om my Macbook could run Vent just fine…?!

That’s when I went to her sound settings (config panel -> sound). Selected the speakers, and clicked on Configure.

They were set to 5.1 Surround, which is what she’s using.

I tried to use some other audio option, like stereo (or quadrophonic), and restarted Vent… And guess what! Yep, it worked.

So I assume Ventrilo 2.1 does not have surround/5.1 (and greater) support.

Some ugly workaround, to change that each time, but at least it works now.

Nazgul:hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-osx yeri$ ./hamachi start
25 19:08:15.659 [   0] [14306] tap: connect() failed 2 (No such file or directory)

So I guess I’ll have to wait for a fix after all. :(

$date com.apple.launchd[1] (tuncfgd$pid) posix_spawnp("/usr/sbin/tuncfg", ...):
No such file or directory
$date com.apple.launchd[1] (tuncfgd$pid) Exited with exit code: 1
$date com.apple.launchd[1] (tuncfgd) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

tun is (trying) to restart every 10 (!) seconds. I tried updating Hamachi’s tun/tap drivers, without any success. It kept restarting the process every 10 seconds.

After a bit of Googling, it seemed to be a known problem. So I decided to uninstall Hamachi & the tun/tap drivers.

sudo rm -r /usr/bin/hamachi
sudo rm -r  /usr/bin/hamachi-init
sudo rm -r  /usr/sbin/tuncfg
sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/tuncfgd.plist
sudo rm -r /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/tuncfgd.plist
sudo rm -r /Applications/HamachiX

This should solve the restarting problem. You might want to reboot to be sure.

When uninstalling the drivers, HamachiX will be gone; there will be no way to use it. You can decide to ignore the spawning-processes, and keep using Hamachi as-is, but the spawning processes might slow down your computer. But HamachiX should work (although it often crashed here).

I tried reinstalling the tun/tap drivers, but the same happens. I guess I’ll have to wait for a fix. :(

On the other side, I’ve tried the console version of Hamachi (so no HamachiX) which seems to be working fine (so far). Just missing out on the handy GUI. Edit

Yesterday evening two of our linux boxes were exploited. I had to try it out for myself; and yes, it really does work. :| Booted up my Ubuntu in Parallels, installed build-essential & ran that program!

sudo apt-get install build-essential
gcc what-ever-the-file-name-is.c
./a.out

This is what it looks like:

My-oh-my… I’m pretty sure this doesn’t require any more explanations ;)

As I’m owning a Macbook Pro (with Leopard) that shouldn’t have to be any problem using Bootcamp.

I created a 5 Gb partition and installed WinXP a few weeks ago. So far all fine.

As I don’t really like to reboot into XP (I can’t access my mails, don’t have my IRC client, all my Camino tabs are closed, …) I tried Parallels.

Parallels, at first, was a real disappointment. It crashed my Mac OS X several times. It was only, just a few days later, when they released a patch to solve all Leopard issues, that I started to enjoy it.

Running all my programs from Parallels (instead of rebooting), I never noticed my Bootcamp WinXP was actually broken. As exams were approaching (I’m not allowed to run a virtualization of Windows, because my school’s key and network loggers won’t work like intended, not that I care that much, but they do ;) ), I rebooted for the first time in weeks to my Bootcamp XP, and noticed the famous hal.dll error (or Google it, you’ll see why it’s famous).

I repaired my Windows XP install (as explained in Parallels’ knowledge base), and that indeed fixed the problem… of Bootcamp… My parallels was now broken (hal.dll error for Parallels, instead of Bootcamp). Trying to recreate a new Parallels virtual disk for bootcamp, or even reinstall the program, … All failed. (There should be bootflags to edit, and force Parallels to use a different hal.dll, well, read about it here, it’s no longer useful for me.)

Googling and searching their forums, no luck, no one had a fixed solution. Only ’try this’ and ’try that’. (To follow the above howto I’ve posted, you need to be able to (re)install Parallels, and by the time I found that howto I wasn’t even able to do that; Parallels froze during installation.) I e-mailed the Parallels support team with my problem, and the form said they’d reply within 3 working days… It has been over 2 weeks, and I’m still waiting.

I then noticed that my Mac/Apple keyboard driver weren’t working in Bootcamp-XP, some chars like #, @, > and so forth weren’t working (or at least the layout didn’t match with my Apple keyboard). I tried to reinstall the Bootcamp drivers (located on my Leopard DVD), they all failed to install (no error message…). Being quite fed up with it, I decided to reinstall XP (without formatting, just overwriting my Windows dir). And here too, the drivers failed to install, with no specific error message… Took the required backups, formatted, and had the wild idea to install Vista.

Booted from the Vista install DVD, and came to the conclusion I needed at least 7 Gb disk space to install Vista (having a 5 Gb partition, this wouldn’t work). Back in os X I deleted the Windows partition, and tried to recreate a new (10 Gb) one.

And… This error came up: “Your disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved” (other link). I now started to panic, as I had less then a week to fix this problem. Following a few try-this-and-try-that’s, I removed a few big files from my disk (someone even said to remove Office 2004, but I wasn’t about to do that), I tried to repair my disk (from the Leopard DVD), I tried smaller partitions, even 5 Gb wouldn’t work, and then, when all hope was almost lost, I tried one last thing; ‘Zero Out Data’. This will overwrite all deleted files (well, marked for deletion by your disk, but still written on it, so this data can theoretically be recovered) with zero’s.

And this too, has to be done from the Mac OS X install CD/DVD.

After, well, about 40 minutes Disk Utility was done, I rebooted right into Leopard, and retried to create a 5 Gb partition… And guess what?! It worked!

I deleted that partition again (5 Gb being to small), and recreated a 15 Gb partition, and this too worked with no problems.

I now happily run Vista on my Macbook Pro, and so far I can’t complain.

The only thing I haven’t been able to fix is Parallels, I can’t even reinstall it (it freezes during install). But heck with it, I’ve lost enough sweat already to fix Bootcamp.